Saturday, July 19, 2014

What We’re Reading: Coming of Age

“It was the best
of times, it was the worst of times”. This quote from Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Citieshas been used to describe many and various situations and
circumstances. One place for which this quote can be particularly apt is high
school. For some people, the time they spent in grades 9-12 will come to be the
happiest in their lives, their “glory days,” and will represent the lifelong
pinnacle of their personal achievements. Others will experience the opposite:
four years of seemingly endless antagonism and disrespect possibly alternating
with utter invisibility. For most, the Dickens quote reflects the wild and
unpredictable swings between ecstasy and agony that is the high school
experience. In Brutal Youth, debut author Anthony Breznican takes us on a
journey through Freshman year in a very troubled Catholic high school in Pennsylvania.

Lorelei Paskal
expects this to be a great year. At her old school, Lorelei became an
outcast after her mother’s debilitating accident at work. She’s transferring to
St. Michael’s for a fresh start with people who don’t know her or her family. As
long as she sticks to her meticulously thought-out plan, she knows that this time she will be
popular.

Peter Davidek is an average student from an average family, which makes him the
perfect target on his first day at St. Michael’s for the ritualized hazing of
the incoming underclassmen by both the students and the faculty. It’s all in
good, character-building fun, right? It is during this “fun” that Davidek befriends
fellow freshman Noah Stein. Stein’s face bears a scar that he will not talk
about. And, being in no mood to tolerate the ritualized abuse, Stein does the
unthinkable: he fights back. This does not sit well with the upperclassmen,
most of the faculty or the parish priest, Father Mercedes, and
now both boys will be targeted to receive escalating “pranks” until they
conform to St. Michael’s traditions. The question now is, who will break first?

In Brutal Youth,
Anthony Breznican allows readers to “attend” the 1991 school year at St. Mike’s
along with the incoming freshmen. Readers, as will the students, learn (or
remember) how treacherous navigating the hallways of high school can be. There
are no heroes or villains in Brutal Youth. All of the characters, faculty,
students and family members are all well drawn and complex. Everyone has his or her own
agenda, and sometimes the experiences that older adults accumulate can be as
crippling as the lack of experience can be for younger adults when determining
how best to act in a situation. Breznican also illustrates nicely the
development, derailing, and re-forging of fragile new relationships.

One of the most
revelatory moments for young people moving into adulthood is the realization
that while adults may know and have experienced more than their younger
counterparts, they are often still doing the best they can to deal with
life’s seemingly endless challenges. Brutal Youth is a nice reminder, or
possibly introduction, of this for readers.

Reviewed by Daryl M., reference librarian

A second perspective by EMME, teen librarian:Daryl coerced me into reading this powerful debut, and I would give this five out of five stars for both the writing and the storytelling, but…the story and characters are in some places so disturbing that I actually hesitate giving it that kind of praise, from sheer discomfort!

This book is Lord of the Flies (but with girls as well as boys), set in a Catholic private school in Pennsylvania. If you are a YA reader, think of it as an adult version (for the amped-up meanness and violence) of The Mockingbirds, by Daisy Whitney, in which the students run rampant, the teachers either turn a blind eye, pick the wrong side because they're not paying attention, or are as mean and cruel as the students, and the so-called "coming of age" factor is at a considerable price for everyone involved.

I didn't so much "enjoy" reading it as remain fascinated and unable to put it down. It's definitely powerful, and in some ways brilliant, but also stark and frightening. Brutal youth, indeed.